The job of an ecommerce marketer is becoming increasingly pivotal in the world of ecommerce, especially as more and more people flock to this niche. Many online shops are starting to make headway while the traditional brick-and-mortar businesses also want to make their presence known digitally.
Besides these, there are various business models in ecommerce cropping up such consumer to consumer (C2C) and direct to consumer (D2C) including revenue models like white label manufacturing and distribution, and drop shipping. All of these things make the ecommerce ecosystem even more complex than it was several years ago.
That is why ecommerce marketers need to be equipped with the knowledge and skills necessary to help ecommerce companies drive revenue and stand out from their competitors.
In this post, we will take a look at the marketing, business, and soft skills you need to become an indispensable ecommerce marketer in today’s digital landscape.
Contents
Marketing Skills for Ecommerce Marketers
One of the first skillsets a good ecommerce marketer should have is tactical marketing skills.
These skills are necessary to improve and polish the way you promote offerings to become successful in a highly competitive space.
1. Search Engine Optimisation
Search Engine Optimisation, commonly referred to as SEO, is the process of ensuring the pages of your website stay accessible and visible in search engines. Fulfilling most criteria in SEO will help websites get better rankings on search engine results pages.
For example, optimising a website with relevant keywords, content, onsite technical improvements and backlinks can guide search engines and let them know what your website and brand does. If done right, someone searching the web for products relevant to what you offer will see the brand easier than others.
SEO is the top skill for organic marketing, and once you have this mastered, it will often surpass every other advertising channel or paid marketing approach there is.
2. Content Marketing
Being able to write quality content is a key ability in ecommerce marketing. The skill can be used in many circumstances: writing copy for products, blogs, video scripts, social media visuals, product reviews, and more.
Although you can always hire someone to do this for you, you still have to supervise your writers with regards to the overall voice and style of your content.
Content marketing is also said to be the foundation of a successful SEO strategy. Search engines love indexing fresh, high-quality content especially those that are relevant and cover the question or topic as a whole.
3. Analytics
The indispensable ecommerce marketer needs to have the ability to examine data and study metrics to ensure their business is making sound decisions.
Marketing budgets revolve around allocating the right funds after facts and figures have been analysed. Such data analysis is crucial in modern ecommerce marketing.
Mastering this skill can significantly help in strategising the efforts of your business while letting you allocate the right investments for maximum returns.
4. Smart Advertising
Advertising in the ecommerce niche needs to be carried out across several channels and using various mediums. Your advertising campaign may include pay-per-click ads, native advertising, display advertising and more.
As an ecommerce marketer, you need to be knowledgeable on how advertising works and how you can attain the maximum potential returns for your investments.
Business Skills for Ecommerce Marketers
Qualitative abilities such as having good interpersonal skills may be innate to some people but practical management skills can be learned and improved upon by anyone.
Here are the top business skills you need to succeed as an ecommerce marketer.
1. Understanding of Web Fundamentals
You do not need to be a good programmer to develop a successful ecommerce brand. However, you need to be knowledgeable of some core web fundamentals to run your store online.
Having to pay developers and programmers for every small change can result in budgets being slashed. So, in some cases, it may be important that you have sufficient knowledge about programming, or at least your ecommerce platform, to do minor site changes yourself.
Some of the key skills you should learn are hosting fundamentals like managing name servers, utilising file transfer protocol, URL redirection, internal linking and domain registration.
Furthermore, taking a couple of classes on CSS and HTML can go a long way in letting you make adjustments to your ecommerce website, identify broken code, and incorporate new elements.
2. Great at Crunching Numbers
This is a handy skill that requires being target-driven, understanding of information, and a good insight that can predict patterns and trends.
You do not need to be a wizard in Excel to calculate your financial projections and break-even expenses. You just need to be good at calculating revenue, tracking sales, managing inventory and handling credit cycles.
For ecommerce marketers, such a skill is highly crucial in keeping a business afloat.
Number crunching is also a skill that ecommerce marketers need to develop continuously especially as the business scales up. This is where you can come across opportunities that can help cover deficits and help the business grow.
3. Ability to Identify Trends
One of the best ways to develop ecommerce business skills is by taking a look at what other marketers in your niche are doing. When you analyse multiple individuals, you can see the trends and patterns to their success.
For example, if you want to learn Search Engine Optimisation, you can allocate some time to studying the top articles ranking for specific keywords. Analyse the format of these articles, see what information is included and how you can stand out.
If you wish to develop viral social media posts relevant to your ecommerce brand, you can spend time studying the most popular posts and brands.
But if you just want to develop your leadership skills, you can look at the leaders you admire and take note of what they are doing differently.
4. Project Management
An indispensable skill in growing a successful and sustainable ecommerce brand is project management.
Being able to manage several channels requires top project management skills.
Project management is a skill that is highly underrated nowadays and is something you must not overlook. Using tools such as Trello, Asana, ClickUp and Basecamp can help solve many of your brand’s project management needs.
Soft Skills for Ecommerce Marketers
Although developing your marketing and business skills is crucial when running an ecommerce business, there are also soft skills that ecommerce marketers should have to be successful.
Learning soft skills not only helps in building up a successful ecommerce business but can also make you a well-rounded individual.
Being an ecommerce marketer that wants to maximise available resources, these soft skills can help you make the most out of your team, ideas, stakeholders, partners, and customers.
1. Leadership Ability
There is a huge difference between a person who gives orders and one who leads. As an ecommerce marketer, you should learn how to lead people by understanding and inspiring them.
Being a leader, you need to work for your people. Ideal leadership is about empowering your team members to feel confident and part of the processes that affect their lives.
You need to have an understanding of your team members, who they are, what their career goals are, what problems they have, and so on. Addressing their needs and connecting with them is important.
Simply assigning projects and delegating work is not enough to make you a good leader. You should be self-aware and have an understanding of who you are. From there, spend time and effort to learn about your team.
Out of all the soft skills ecommerce marketers should have, possessing leadership ability is the most important for business success.
2. Communication Skills
Another skill set you need to develop has to do with communication. Communicating clearly and effectively with peers, partners and investors is vital as an ecommerce marketer.
Your team members need to understand the overall goals, mission and vision of the business. Your clients need to understand the value that you bring and the utility offered by your products.
Improving your communication skills includes mastering all types of communication from one-on-one conversations to group discussions, email, written content and even social media messages.
Specifically, you want to improve the following communication skills:
- Listening
- Writing
- Presenting
- Speaking
All of these skills allow you to deliver your message effectively and help others understand and relate to your goals.
3. Time Management
Learning how to manage your time is another important soft skill every good ecommerce marketer should have.
Most of the time, ecommerce marketers are swamped with many tasks. That is why knowing how to manage your time is important if you want to succeed.
You can categorise your duties and tasks based on importance or delegate them where necessary. You may even look into outsourcing.
You do not want to do everything by yourself. You need to invest in developing a way to let you follow through. Make use of your calendar and block time out. Focus on the important tasks first (high impact + high urgency). I personally also like to use a planner to write tasks down, focusing on the 1-3 important tasks and then listing everything else (nice to do… if I can).
Doing so can help clear your mind, allowing you to make decisions easily while maximising your productivity.
4. Willingness to Continue Learning
As an ecommerce marketer, your journey is going to be a rollercoaster. There are many ups and downs throughout, which is why having the willingness to continue learning is important.
An ecommerce marketer should have an open mind and the desire to learn new concepts, especially with the constantly changing ecommerce landscape.
There is a good probability that your colleagues have some great inputs that they can share. If you, as a marketer, can learn from just about anyone and in any situation, then you will be on your way to finding success.
Final Thoughts
There are obviously many skills needed for an ecommerce business to succeed. However, the skills listed above are some of the most crucial for ecommerce marketers to have and improve upon.
Having a good understanding of all of the skills listed, and maybe even specialising in one, will increase your chances of growing a successful ecommerce brand and make you an indispensable ecommerce marketer.